Steven Bartlett: Small Wins Beat Big Breakthroughs
According to the host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, small, consistent gains matter more than big wins, as their compounding effect leads to lasting success in business and life.
There’s often a temptation in business – and in life, really – to chase the big wins.
We’re keeping our eyes peeled for the next groundbreaking idea. The instant breakthrough. The massive leap forward that changes everything.
But Steven Bartlett sees things differently.
Speaking at the Future Human 2025 summit in Dubai staged by Mindvalley, one of the world’s leading platforms for personal transformation, the British entrepreneur and investor – who’s perhaps best known today for being the host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, which crossed one billion streams in 2024 – said that he doesn’t see much value in operating with the aforementioned mindset.
“In life, it’s really difficult to find big steps forward,” he says. “Like, if you think about any area in which you are competing, it’s really difficult for you to find a big step forward, a significant advantage that none of your competitors have seen – a new platform, some huge new innovation. It’s difficult, and if you set a group of people in the pursuit of [such] a big step forward, they [get] demotivated, because it’s hard to find, and it takes a lot of time. They lose hope.”
Instead, Bartlett believes in setting out with an – arguably – simpler mission: securing one-percent gains. He says that these small actions have a compounding effect over time – but they’d require one to always have a laser focus on the details, and ensure they are always at the top of their game. Sure, such small wins might be easy to accomplish – but Bartlett points out that they’re just as easy to overlook or ignore.
“Brushing your teeth this morning – easy to do, also easy not to do,” Bartlett says, as an example. “Don’t brush your teeth today, nothing happens. Don’t brush your teeth every day this week, you’re fine – your breath smells a little bit, but generally, you are fine. But, don’t brush your teeth every day for 10 years – what happens then? You’re in a dental chair, and they’re ripping the teeth out of your mouth.”
Bartlett believes that this compounding principle applies to everything – health, finances, relationships, and, yes, business. And that’s why he and his team take details so seriously.
For instance, Bartlett shares that when Spotify founder Daniel Ek arrived at The Diary of a CEO studio, Swedish House Mafia was playing in the background, and the first thing he said was, “Oh my God, I love this song!” But this wasn’t just happenstance – Bartlett and his team had made it a point to find Ek’s favorite music and play it as he walked in, thereby ensuring he had a great experience from the get-go.
It’s a philosophy that might seem obsessive – even excessive. But Bartlett believes that’s where the edge lies. “If you can sweat the small stuff more than your competition, to the point that a room of people would think you are pathetic, then, you just need patience, because that compounding growth chart is at work,” he points out.
According to Bartlett, the law of compounding means that progress will probably be slow and invisible in the short term – but it will reach a point where the game you’re playing changes entirely. And at the end of the day, that’s worth all the effort.
This article first appeared in the January/February issue of Inc. Arabia magazine. To read the full issue online, click here.
Pictured on image is British entrepreneur and investor Steven Bartlett.
